Page 3016 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 23 September 2014
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The ACT approvals bilateral agreement is different from that of the other states and territories as a direct result of this Greens-Labor parliamentary agreement item, requiring the continued role of the federal government in looking at each and every approval. While the Abbott government is abdicating responsibility in all other states for protecting habitats and species that have long been held as having national value, we are not going to let that happen here in the ACT. The ACT bilateral agreement means that they cannot just hand over that responsibility and walk away.
As a result of meeting this parliamentary agreement commitment, the ACT will be unique in maintaining some of the architecture of commonwealth involvement in environmental decision-making. The ACT bilateral agreement establishes an arrangement whereby both the ACT and the federal governments will continue to oversee each and every proposal with likely significant adverse environmental impacts. No other state or territory has done this. This is very different from other states in Australia, which are letting the federal government hand back decision-making powers wholesale to the states, and allowing them to approve projects that might impact on nationally significant environments or species.
The draft ACT bilateral approvals agreement between the ACT and the federal government was released for consultation until 12 September. The draft bilateral agreement is a federal disallowable instrument and it now needs to go through both houses of federal parliament before it can commence. This legislation before us today also establishes a planning and development process which aligns with the bilateral agreement.
In conjunction with a continued strong role for the federal government in EPBC processes, the ACT Greens believe that it is important to have a strong and independent role for the Conservator of Flora and Fauna in planning and development decisions and a good accompanying offsets policy which goes hand in hand with this bill today. In general, the Greens also believe that it is extremely important to have a strong role for the conservator in the Nature Conservation Act, and we will be discussing that matter on another day in another bill.
In terms of how this bill specifically works, as it currently stands, when a proposal is likely to have a significant adverse impact on a matter of national environmental significance, a proposal must be given to the federal government to make a decision. This bill instead changes the workload to allow the ACT government to do the approvals work and then to send the approval decision to the commonwealth minister for advice. Every single proposal that involves a significant adverse environmental impact on a matter of national environmental significance must be referred to the commonwealth. The commonwealth minister has the final say on any approval, can veto a proposal, and cannot be overridden by the ACT planning authority or the ACT minister.
If a proposal is put forward with matters of national environmental significance, the Conservator of Flora and Fauna must give advice, including on the matters of national environmental significance offset proposal. ACTPLA assesses and approves the development application using the advice of the conservator. The advice of the
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